Kinda shy for a Jedi.

Ben looked up suddenly, a teasing grin on his face. “All right, spill. D’ya like someone here? It’s gotta be. You don’t know anyone else.”

Fannie’s cheeks turned bright enough to turn a sunflower’s head. “How do you know?” she smiled. “It might be someone I know from home.”

“You said you only know your family back home,” Ben pointed out.

“That’s not true,” Fannie replied, busying herself with straightening the covers on her bed. “There are the servants in my father’s house, and the servants’ children. Perhaps I fancy one of the serving boys.”

“Oh, so you do like somebody!” Ben smirked triumphantly. “If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be trying to throw me off the trail right now.”

Fannie smiled at the covers, but said nothing, her heart pounding in her chest.

“Nah…I think it’s somebody here,” Ben pressed. “Is it…”

He proceeded to run down the roster of all the students at the school, and Fannie denied every one.

“Okay, now I know you’re lying,” Ben huffed. “I named everybody. Well, everyone except me—but I’m not really a student here, technically—and I know I don’t count, anyway.”

Fannie smiled sadly at the covers. She couldn’t have straightened them any further.

“Well—I’ll be at your wedding, won’t I?” Ben asked brightly. “You’ll invite me and stuff? I know we haven’t been friends for that long—but you’re, like, one of the closest friends I’ve ever had. Besides--it's probably the only way I'll ever experience a wedding, ‘cause I'm sure not gettin' married. Can you imagine how embarrassing it would be? To hafta kiss someone in front of everybody?"

Fannie laughed, looking up at him.

“Of course I'll invite you, Ben,” she said warmly. “I do so hope you will be present at my wedding.”

----------------------------

Years later, Ben was present at Fannie's wedding...and, in fact, he was present to such a degree that his absence would have disrupted it greatly.

And yet…it was not Ben who had thoughts of deserting it.

Fannie fingered the lace she had spent all those years crocheting, ever since she was a little girl. The beginning rows had been clumsy in her chubby fingers. The ending rows had been clumsy, too…though not from a lack of skill.

For the rest of her life, Fannie Pentarra would remember the wedding she had spent so long dreaming of almost as if it had happened to someone else.

Where did this grief come from, she wondered? This was what she had always wanted...and with whom she had always wanted.

…Maybe it was she herself she did not want.

She let out a sigh—but did so carefully. She knew she was not allowed to sigh today.

The last several years had been hard on her. She had thought she would get over it. She had thought that something as magnificent as her wedding—which had seemed to her for so long like the central jewel in the crown of her life, waiting patiently to be set—would force her out of it.

But now the day was here, and her face was hidden in the millions of little stitches made by the hands of a girl in love—first with life, and then with Ben, and she felt…

…Well. She didn’t feel what she had thought she would, that was certain.

Her wedding veil felt almost like a veil of mourning upon her. She thought of the baby girl that had almost been hers, the one whose birthday she celebrated every year even though she would never see her again, and she thought of the sisters she hadn’t seen in almost as long.

They were not here at the wedding.

Nor was her mother.

They would have attended…had the wedding been on Ryloth, and had her husband been one of their own people. Unfortunately, Fannie had not chosen the location of her wedding nor the identity of her husband in order to please them.

And so, she walked down the aisle alone. All eyes upon her, but none of them belonging to her kin.

…Except for Mikal. She was grateful that he had come. Still, he had a different mother than she did, and was so much younger than her that she hardly felt she knew him at all.

Fannie felt odd to be looked at. Everyone stared and smiled at her. She smiled back, but felt that perhaps it was the dress and the veil they all marveled at, and not really her. She clutched the bouquet and fixed her eyes straight ahead—

—and there was Ben.

Something within her warmed at the sight of him, dressed in his finest and looking characteristically nervous…but besides the anxiety, or perhaps mingled with it, was the most euphoric smile she had ever seen, barely suppressed by his lifelong habit of pressing his lips together whenever he experienced too much emotion.

He looked like he was writing poems about her in his head.

Fannie smiled back at him, and she found that this smile was genuine, even if it was not nearly as intense as his. She joined him at the head of the pavilion, and as she stopped, he excitedly mouthed at her: “Wow.”

Wow, indeed.

The next several minutes would not stay a part of Fannie’s retained memory, besides the thoughts that plagued her—the vague idea that her wedding should have come on a different day, one where she was happier, and the observation that Ben’s hands seemed to shake and become slick in hers, and the series of questions that always seemed to come to her at least thrice a day—where was Bunnie, and how was Bunnie, and would she ever see Bunnie again?

It was Master Luke who married them, and this had been at Fannie’s own request…but she was only able to focus on the sound of Luke’s voice when the ceremony had all but concluded, and there was only one ritual left:

“You may now kiss the bride.”

Fannie found herself back in her body, and studied Ben’s face as he nervously lifted the veil he had unwittingly threatened to cover in cheese nearly a decade before. He first threw a look of embarrassed panic into the crowd, then quickly leaned into her and cupped his hand around her cheek to hide the joining of their faces from the onlookers—who all gave up a wild cheer nonetheless.

It was their first kiss.

It was her first kiss.

But…it was not his. And she should not have felt so betrayed for that, except for the circumstances in which she knew he had given it—

Ben pulled away, grinning in spite of himself and rubbing his thumb over her cheek, and Fannie realized with shock that her first kiss had come and gone and she had not even experienced it. Desperately, she clutched him again and rejoined their lips, and this time—caught by surprise—he was unable to hide.

This kiss she experienced, and there was pleasure in it, and excitement…but the degree to which it met her expectations was much the same as the rest of the day itself, which was a blur. A happy blur. A fuzzy blur. A pretty blur.

A daydream.

After all her years of daydreaming of her wedding, her wedding was nearly a daydream itself. It was happy, and it was beautiful…and then it was over.

She found herself standing alone in the refresher room in their new apartment, slipping out of her dress. The veil she kept on. That was part of its design, according to her people’s custom—its train was long enough to drape around her body like a shawl, that she might open it and reveal herself to her husband when the time came. She had been too young to understand that part of its function when she had begun the first starting chain.

Carefully, she folded the veil around herself, tucking it over her breasts, the sea-green of her skin visible through the windows in the lace. She looked at herself wide-eyed in the mirror.

This moment, too, she had looked forward to on many a quiet and lonesome night.

…And yet, she watched as a pair of tears fell down her cheeks.

The tracks of them were still fresh as she emerged from the refresher room and found Ben waiting for her on the edge of the bed, undressed to just his pants and a look that was even more nervous than the one he had worn at the altar.

“I think I’m gonna throw up,” he blurted.

Fannie stared at him. “Exactly the words I’d hoped you’d say, upon the first unveiling of my flesh,” she said wryly.

Ben laughed. “Sorry. I didn’t mean it that way—I’ve just got the jitters, that’s all.”

Fannie smiled graciously, and sat down next to him.

“Hey, Fan, um…are you happy?” he asked shyly.

“What?” Fannie said, startled by the bluntness of the question.

“I just asked, uh, well…are you happy.”

“Why…yes,” she murmured, not daring to think too hard about his question nor her answer. “Of course I am. Why do you ask?”

“Oh, just…sometimes I worry I’m not enough for you,” he said, sounding embarrassed to even admit it. “Like I’m not good enough. Like I’m not anything enough.” He paused, then gave her a silly smile. “Not sexy enough.”

Fannie giggled. “Well…I wouldn’t worry about that. I don’t have anyone to compare you to, you know—not in that regard.”

“Maybe you’ve only settled for me because you’ve had so few people to compare me to,” Ben suggested, sounding as if he wanted to come across as joking, but might not actually be. “I mean…surely I couldn’t have been the best option out there. Not for someone as great as you.”

To Fannie’s horror…there was a very tiny part of her that wondered if he was right.

“Oh…don’t be ridiculous, dear,” she insisted, trying to quell her panic. “We’re married now. I’ve chosen you.”

“Well…maybe you chose wrong,” Ben laughed, his self-doubt wafting off of him in a way that was nearly visible to the eye.

…Maybe he was right.

…Maybe she had.

…No.

…No!

“Stop,” Fannie whispered, speaking to herself almost as much as she spoke to him. “Please, love. You mustn’t talk that way. I chose you. And I will continue to choose you—every day and forever.”

“I just…feel like I’m not…like I’m not really the man you’ve spent your whole life dreaming of,” Ben whispered, and this time he did not make any attempt to joke. “I mean—yeah, I know you had a huge crush on me for a really long time. But…I just don’t feel like I’ve come even close to living up to…to how in love you were with me all those years, and how much you’ve looked forward to being married all your life, and…and…”

And at that precise moment, something fell into place.

All at once, the veil that was wrapped around Fannie’s body like a great, big, beautiful fishnet threatened to choke her—a million wishes and a million daydreams and a million expectations, from the five-year-old’s yearnings for a white gown that grazed the floor to the twenty-five-year-old’s longings for a man’s lips against her breast—all these ideas about what she wanted—all these things she had hoped for—but it didn’t really matter, now, did it? She had someone in front of her, now—whether he lived up to the millions of little stitches or not.

…Yes.

…Ben was hers.

She was sure about that.

Fannie’s mind was made up. She swiftly drew herself up and untied the veil in one motion, and ten million stitches of a young girl’s dreams crumpled to the floor. She stood naked before her husband, free of the hopes and dreams that had come pre-written for a man she had not yet met—ready instead to write new ones with the one she had now married.

Ben stared at her, his eyes as wide as tea saucers.

He did not, thankfully, throw up…but the sight of her seemed to elicit some other physiological response—one she would not have even been able to perceive, had he not suddenly made a move as if to try and hide it with the placement of one hand. His other, trembling, came up to rest upon the curve of her left hip.

Fannie stepped forward and leaned into him, gliding her fingers up his neck and closing them around his hair. She shut her eyes, and rested her chin on top of his head.

A second custom of Fannie’s people was for married women to cover their heads to demonstrate their marital status. Now that she had left Ryloth, and had not married a Rylothian, no one would have held her to this tradition…but Fannie thought she might like to at least begin crocheting a new veil, anyway. No longer one of white, but one of some other color that became her—perhaps that pensive shade of cerulean blue that Ben seemed to like. And again, with every stitch she would say a blessing for her husband…only, this time, each blessing would not be a hope for the ways she wished him to be, except for the ways she wished him to be for his own sake—but a heartfelt gratitude for all the ways he was.

There were so many things about him she was thankful for.

…Sometimes, she simply forgot.

It would be a falsehood to say that the wedding night lived up to Fannie’s expectations any more than the kiss or the ceremony had. How could any of them? She had built them all up so much in her mind, and this last observance was the one most affected by their lack of experience. It could not be described as a successful encounter by most standards, due to a general clumsiness on the accounts of both parties, and a repeated necessity to stop and ask for directions.

Still, each found themselves satisfied eventually, and they laughed with the earnest enjoyment of one’s another’s company nearly as often as they uttered other sounds.

And, for the first time that day, as they held hands that night and drifted off to sleep…Fannie’s face glowed with the kind of smile she’d often had at sixteen, elbows-deep in swaths of lace.

She was married, now.